You Can (and Perhaps Should) Repeat Yourself

In a forthcoming review of Rob Henderson’s recent book Troubled, I invoked a passage from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. It reads: “Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.’ The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see…” I discussed this passage because I believed Henderson deserved credit for putting forward—both in his memoir and in his social media posts (how most people have to come to learn of his work)—self-help advice that tends to honor time-tested principles. Instead of resorting to parroting the latest gimmick or fad, Henderson—like Jordan Peterson and Naval Ravikant—frequently shares and reshares the basics: eat healthy, don’t drink to excess, exercise each day even when you don’t feel like it, and, perhaps most importantly, don’t waste your time. (1) We know this already, at least most of us do. But how often do we forget the basics, the key points, amid the endless barrage of tweets, never-ending news articles about far-away things outside of our control, and the daily tasks that populate so much of our lives: oil changes, running out of stamps, maintaining relationships, going to work?

Just as there may only be so many essential truths about what is conducive to having a contented and productive life—with more information beyond the basics tending to confuse rather than refine one’s approach—one wonders if a similar phenomenon takes place in the world of ideas. Most immediately, certain truths or realities are fundamental and already tend to be known to most of us (presented to us long ago either by attentive parents or contained within the basic teachings of many philosophies or religions, or even in vaunted aphorisms). (2) And, relatedly, one also begins to wonder if there are certain ways of phrasing the key points that have already been formulated, capture them perfectly, and, thus, cannot really be improved upon.

During the early pandemic months, with social events cancelled, I found myself with more time to read than normal. Just a few months prior, in June of 2019, George F. Will had published what we might come to call his magnum opus The Conservative Sensibility, an incredibly thorough summary of his political philosophy in his late 70s, a more libertarian worldview quite removed from the one he championed decades before in works such as his 1983 book Statecraft as Soulcraft. After finishing The Conservative Sensibility, I turned my attention to some of Will’s other works, including his 1995 essay anthology The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News. Reading the essays within, most of which were once Washington Post columns, one after the other, I was struck by how phrases and examples first explored in these essays (and others) were replicated just about exactly in his later book, decades later. Although initially eyebrow-raising, perhaps, upon further reflection, it can be understood as such: the replicated lines or points indeed bear repeating. A reader might need to be reminded that “the most important four words in politics are: up to a point”; that so many American political figures are rhetorically Jeffersonians but, in practice, Hamiltonians; that far too much power is concentrated in Washington D.C. and its surrounding counties; and that Will believes America is a creedal nation. (3) And as much as at first blush, one might be tempted to accuse an author of being unimaginative in recycling previous work or, worse yet, of self-plagiarism of the sort Fareed Zakaria has been accused (a different matter), I choose to see it that sometimes one already found the best words or examples, and they ought to be emphasized rather than modified for variety’s sake. (4)